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The Great Darkness Saga

From Legion of Super-Heroes vol.2 290-294(4 regular issues and a last double sized issue)Written by Paul Levitz. Art by Keith GiffenDC let this TPB go out of print but if there is any justice in the world it will get an absolute edition

It all begins with the Legion on a regular mission trying to find someone who has caused criminal damage of a museum.

Cosmic Boy takes a team to the Tower of London. It turns out more magical artifacts have gone walkabouts so they think they can use Excalibur as bait for the theif. You may remember Supergirl found it during her Legion tryouts. The legion fail and King Arthur's Sword is stolen.

Meanwhile Lighting Lad is unwell

and there is a legion leader election underway

The field team are sent to the site of another possible robbery, this time on Talok VII. They lose the artifact but capture one of the theives.

It turns out that the theif they captured is Shadow Lass' ancestor Lydea Mallor. (who appeared in L.E.G.I.O.N, daughter of Lyrissa Mallor). Meanwhile Darkseid resurrects Mordru in Avalon. Legion get on with business

On the trail of the servents of the darkess we see Takron Galtos has been destroyed and the prisoners are free. Mon-El and Ultra Boy try and contain the situation. They find another servant

Lightning Lad is still out...

So lets get this straight. They are facing a villain who they have already guessed is in a whole new league and Superboy skips town...okay.

The servants are going after magic doers so what do we think is wrong when they meet nura's sister the White Witch

Stick Figure Invisible Kid always makes me LOL

Part 3 opens with the passing mention that Dream Girl won the leadership contest and so they go to Socerers World. It's the Magic Kingdom! They find more servants...this is getting a bit repetitive now!

Garth wakes up and thows himself into his work, the legion founders do DNA tests on the servants with startling results

The people of sorcerer's world don't believe the legionnaires and they go to the battle dream girl prophecises they will lose.

Brainiac 5 ups his force sheild to hold up the servants but its untested against such force.

The forces of evil vacate the world, Wildfire gets a new suit and Dream Girl is suitably proud of herself

Part 4 opens with Mon-El conveniently comatose and white witch drained of magic. There are a few pages of legionnaire confusion which are useless in the plot.

All legionnaires and reservists are called in to battle. So what was the point of Superboy leaving again?!

meanwhile the legion fight the servants:

Shocker.

Brainy deducts it is the legendary Darkseid who had been considered a myth previously. Finally the legion sends for the Subs and the retired legionnaires.

Darkseid deduces that the white witch is getting more powers from an unknown source.

With Highfather gone Orion turns to dust but he provided enough of distraction

He leaves a prophecy that the purest of them will decend in darkness...which turns up later down the line.

Hard to believe now, but there was a time when Darkseid appearances were very rare, and him showing up in a non-New Gods series was almost unheard-of. They really played up the mystery and suspense, and when he was finally revealed, it was a classic "WOW!" moment.

I have so many fond memories of this arc, the wonderful early Giffen work (before he got... scratchy), the creepiness of the Servants of the Dark, the new look White Witch, the sheer grandeur and SCALE of the thing, this was true superheroic space opera writ large! I hope Kirby loved it!

I love this story too, although you left one of my favorite parts, when Dream Girl orders Brainiac and the others to keep the servants of darkness off the Teachers' Isle at all costs, and Brainy just promises to hold or die.

I also love moment when Dream Girl sounds the alarum bell to summon up the replacements, the reserves, the resignees, everybody.

But yeah, this was a great story. Some of the bits with Light Lass and Shrinking Violet are kind of amusing when you consider what happened with them later. Anyway, thanks for posting this.

Undermined? I think you mean perfected. What I love about it is that she's emphatically not leading them into death, she's ordering them to their deaths. She's doing what a good commander has to do sometimes, and they're doing what good soldiers have to do sometimes. And you can tell just from the look on Dream Girl's face that this was not what she thought she was letting herself in for when she ran for the position of Legion leader; it's a great growing-up moment for her.

The page in that first scan always makes me smile. Paul Levitz and I had the same high school history teacher, the brilliant and immensely funny Dr. A. E. Stefanacci...who looked nothing like this character, I hasten to add! (I assume it was Keith Giffen's idea to draw him like Dr. Strange with static-charged hair...)

I said on USENET once that this was big screen comics long before the Authority was associated with that word. I was lucky enough to start reading LSH just before GDS began, and reading this over the course of those five months the story took made me the Legion fanboy I am for life.

You can't really tell from the compression of this post, but it was a slow, slow build, while the Legion dealt with day-to-day silliness like the election and other minor crises, and just these little shadows and hints of things to come. Then things gradually start getting darker, and then all hell breaks loose...

And by the time Darkseid gets to Daxam, the threat seems credibly cosmic, and yet not bleakly, grimly hopeless (FC, I'm lookin' at you here). I loved the new additions earning their spurs in battle, and I loved that for all their bickering, the Legion was so cohesive going up against the Darkness.

Just - yeah, everything I loved about the 80s Legion, pretty much, right there in one post.

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